Competing Hegemonies: Can Suniti Namjoshi Be Named 'Black British'?

Born in Western Maharashtra and now living between Devon (UK) and India, Suniti Namjoshi does not comfortably fit into the frame of Black British/South Asian diaspora writers. As a matter of fact, her work heavily problematizes the current mainstream perception of Indo-English culture (as exemplified in British music and cinema as well as in the works of writers such as Hanif Kureishi, Zadie Smith and Monica Ali) as a marketable commodity in the Western global imaginary in order to underscore the challenge Hindu culture offers to Western identity-making narratives. Her focus on the activity of ‘making stories’ produces a proliferation of signifiers where English may even become an ‘exotic’ language in relationship with the equally hegemonic Hindu milieu. In the face of both, Namjoshi takes a radical political stance, deeply ingrained in the construction of her writer persona, a point clearly made in her ‘autobiographical myth’ Goja: “I belong to India and to the West. Both belong to...